


Something Else Entirely

by giselleslash



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-24
Updated: 2011-10-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 22:34:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/268633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/giselleslash/pseuds/giselleslash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwaine is missing something in his life and Merlin helps him find it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Else Entirely

It starts when Arthur is fifteen and decides that maybe he might just like boys a bit more than girls after all. Gwaine is fifteen too, and horny, and thinks a lot of thoughts about Arthur’s mouth so it’s only natural that they try things out with one another.

It goes on for a couple of years; until Arthur leaves for university and Gwaine just leaves (there are places he needs to see that are beyond the borders of their hometown). It just sort of ends. Just like that. Neither one of them lets on that it was anything other than a fun time and a way to get through their horny teenage boy years.

It’s years later when Gwaine comes back. He meets Merlin and falls into friendship with him and then rather tragically into hopeless, unavoidable love with him. He tells him that he loves him and realizes it’s the first time he’s ever said that to anyone other than his sister and mother. It’s thrilling and awkward and the scariest fucking thing he’s ever done, but Merlin grins his impossible grin and says he loves him too and suddenly it’s much less scary. He says it a second time, and a third, and he wonders why it took him so long.

He and Merlin go along together just fine. Gwaine finds he likes coming home to someone and that backpacking through Cambodia on ten quid and a prayer holds nothing on opening the door to Merlin’s cursing, billows of smoke, and the remains of what was to be a grand dinner. Merlin isn’t a cook by any stretch of the imagination and they end up with take away instead.

He’s happy. Incredibly so. But one day Merlin plops down next to him and hands him a small stack of pictures. Gwaine’s mom had sent them to him but Merlin had opened up the envelope because he has no sense of privacy whatsoever and it makes Gwaine smile.

He holds the pictures in his hands and staring up at him is Arthur. Very young and very beautiful and the very first lips he learned to kiss.

 _Who’s that? He’s gorgeous._

 _Arthur._

Just Arthur. It’s all Gwaine can say. How can he explain to Merlin that he’s holding in his hands a picture of the one piece of him that’s been missing all these years? Left behind where it shouldn’t have been.

Merlin teases him about Arthur’s blond hair and blue eyes and crooked teeth.

 _Was he your first love?_

Gwaine swallows. Everything. It’s all stuck in his throat.

 _Yes. He was._

He says it like it’s a surprise to him, although he knows it shouldn’t be. There were times when he and Arthur were together that he had laughed out loud from the simple joy of touching him. How was that not love? He thinks he tricked himself into thinking it was something less because they were fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, and a secret so huge it took all of their effort to contain it.

Merlin sees through him, he always does.

 _Gwaine?_

Merlin touches his neck, the corner of his lips, and Gwaine smiles at him because he’s so happy he has Merlin and that he made him grow up.

 _I never realized until just now. I never told him._

Merlin kisses him.

 _I wish I had._

 _I know._

Merlin gets up and leaves Gwaine to his pictures, but he looks back at him before he leaves the room.

 _You should look him up._

Gwaine smiles at Merlin and gets up to kiss him before he lets him go. A heart that big needs to be held close.

He spends the next few minutes looking through the handful of pictures and trying not to think he’s missed out on something important. Something important is in the back room singing some horrendous pop song in an equally horrendous voice. Gwaine already has his something important, it’s best not to be greedy and want more.

 

~*~

 

It’s months later, around Christmas, that his mom upsets his world again. He and Merlin are visiting, eating too much, and shaking presents beneath the tree. Out of the blue his mother tells him Uther is having a Christmas party and she hears Arthur will be there, wouldn’t Gwaine like to go and see his old friend?

Merlin looks over at him and Gwaine knows he hasn’t been as covert as he’d thought these last few months. He hasn’t hid it well that now he wonders, now he touches the center of his chest to try to rub away the emptiness, the missed opportunity, even though he knows that it never fills.

 _You should go._

We _should go._

 _Okay._

The party is a stupidly posh affair, as all things Uther always are. Gwaine feels awkward and out of place enough without it pressing in on him from all sides. But Merlin holds his hand and he feels brave.

He tries not to crane his neck, or stare wide-eyed into the crowd as he looks for Arthur. He’s close now and he’s tempted to leave without finding him. It’s stupid to hope like he does.

Merlin has whispered to him in the middle of the night, has said it’s okay. The idea isn’t even formed in Gwaine’s mind yet but Merlin knows it’s there. It’s enough to make him want to forget it all because Merlin is enough. He always has been. Gwaine is selfish to want more.

 _There’s something missing._ Merlin says. _I feel it too._

Gwaine tells himself over and over; it’s crazy, it’s crazy, it’s crazy.

He keeps looking for Arthur anyway and when he finds him he just stares; caught between walking out the door and walking toward him. Merlin lets go of his hand and pushes him in Arthur’s direction, gently but insistently.

Arthur watches him as he walks toward him and although Gwaine is the one that thinks he has all the words to say it’s Arthur that speaks first.

 _Gwaine._

Gwaine closes his eyes because nobody says his name like that, only Arthur. When he opens them, for a brief flash of time, Arthur is fifteen again and Gwaine’s young heart is manic in his chest.

 _This is strange, but I want to talk to you. Tell you something._

Arthur nods and looks over Gwaine’s shoulder at Merlin because he’s staring at them as well, from across the room. Gwaine looks back and Merlin smiles at him and he smiles back, suddenly okay.

 _That’s Merlin._

Arthur sort of smiles at him, at the pride in his voice, and Gwaine thinks he ought to be embarrassed but he’s not.

Arthur pulls him away, down a long, familiar hallway. Before he knows it they’re in Arthur’s bedroom and crawling out the window to sit on the roof, just as they’d done long ago.

 _I haven’t any fags on me. I feel like we should be sneaking a smoke._

Gwaine smiles because that’s what they did back when they were thirteen and sneaking cigarettes from Uther. It took a few years before smoking turned to kissing which was better in every imaginable way.

 _How long have you and Merlin been together?_

 _Almost two years now._

 _You look pathetically smitten._

 _I am. Who would’ve thought?_

Arthur looks at him and Gwaine thinks that maybe he did, that Arthur thought that of him, that he was capable of more.

 _Are you seeing anyone?_

Arthur shakes his head.

 _No._

The way Arthur says it, turns away, makes Gwaine think there hasn’t been anyone in a long time. Arthur seems lonely and Gwaine thinks it terribly wrong.

 _Remember when we used to come out here and I couldn’t stop kissing you?_

Arthur smiles and he really hasn’t changed all that much, at least not in Gwaine’s eyes, and in all the ways that matter.

 _Of course I do._

Gwaine has thought about all the ways he could say it but every sensible thought leaves him and he just says it straight out.

 _I loved you. Like crazy. I should’ve said._

Gwaine can’t see all of Arthur’s face, there’s only the light of his bedroom shining out through the window, but what he sees makes him happy.

 _I loved you too. You were my first love._

 _How lucky for you._

Gwaine laughs when Arthur snorts and he really wishes it was ten years ago and that they could just carry on with the kissing.

Arthur shoves at him and Gwaine shoves back, but he catches Arthur’s hand in his and pulls it into his lap.

 _I was wondering if you were free for dinner sometime?_

Arthur looks at him, confused, and Gwaine doesn’t blame him but he doesn’t pull his hand away and Gwaine just holds it even tighter.

 _What about Merlin?_

 _I’ll tell you all about him._

 

~*~

 

Gwaine starts seeing Arthur more and more; for dinner, for coffee, for a film where they sit in the back and make fun of everything about it just like they did when they were sixteen.

Gwaine knows Arthur is confused by what they have now; it’s friendship, but it’s not just that, and Gwaine knows if he says what he’s thinking out loud Arthur will flat out refuse so instead he tells Arthur that he and Merlin should go out some night, that he thinks they’ll really hit it off.

Just as he’s never said anything out loud to Arthur, not in actual, succinct words, neither has he and Merlin said anything either. Gwaine believes Merlin knows him, knows his heart, and reads him like a book, but he isn’t entirely sure so it’s with an unfamiliar shyness that he suggests dinner with Arthur.

Merlin kisses him, says he’d love to get to know Arthur better. He, too, hints but never says straight out.

Gwaine is impatient and jittery the entire time Merlin is gone. He starts one thing and goes to the next without finishing the first because he can’t concentrate on anything until Merlin gets home.

When Merlin finally does get home, far later than Gwaine had been expecting, he’s smiling and his eyes are shining an unbelievable blue as he tells him that Arthur is sort of amazing, isn’t he?

 

~*~

 

Things are easier after that. Still nothing is said out right, but everything is easier, as much as things like this can be, and Gwaine feels like all the things that will make him happy are now within his reach.

Merlin sees Arthur more, just the two of them, and Gwaine sees him too until one day Arthur asks why aren’t they doing things together? The three of them? Gwaine smiles and says, why not, and lets Arthur think it’s all his idea because he’s always been like that; in control of everything, always the leader.

They spend more time with each other than with anyone else. It feels right to Gwaine and he hopes it feels the same for Arthur and Merlin but he lets things go slowly for quite some time, for longer than he ever thought he had the patience for, until things just happen as they should.

It’s late and they’ve been watching stupid action films all night. Arthur yawns and starts to shift as if he’s going to leave. Merlin looks at Gwaine and he feels the look deep down in his bones. There’s a faint smile turning up the corner of Merlin’s lips and Gwaine’s heartbeat picks up.

Merlin moves closer to Arthur, wraps a hand around his.

 _Stay._

Arthur freezes. He sits and stares at Merlin’s hand over his and doesn’t say anything for a really long time. Gwaine moves to sit on Arthur’s other side. Arthur is sitting on the edge of the couch, turned toward Merlin and Gwaine presses himself against Arthur’s back, carefully, slowly. He wraps his arms around Arthur’s waist and lays his right hand over Arthur’s heart. It’s hammering in his chest and it’s then that Gwaine starts to feel the emptiness in the center of his own start to fill back up.

 _Stay._ Merlin says again.

Arthur takes a deep breath then, a gasp of a drowning man finally surfacing, and says yes. Then yes again to make sure he was heard. He tangles his fingers up with Merlin’s and relaxes into Gwaine’s hold. Merlin touches the side of Arthur’s face and he begins to breathe easier.

Gwaine looks at Merlin and wants to laugh because he’s looking at Arthur’s lips, focused and hungry, and Gwaine knows he wants to kiss him but he’s waiting for Gwaine because he had those lips first and they need to be his again, just for a moment, before they can really belong to anyone else.

Gwaine turns Arthur, pushes him back against the couch, and leans over him. He touches Arthur’s lips before kissing them and it’s like falling back in time and leaping into the rest of his life all at once. He kisses Arthur again and again as Merlin holds Arthur’s hand. Gwaine reaches out for Merlin and he holds onto him too, closing the gap between the three of them, and they become something not entirely normal but something all their own.

Arthur stays the night, the next day, and the night after that, but on the second morning he’s gone. For more than a week he’s absent from their lives. Merlin worries, misses him, and Gwaine doesn’t know how they’ll manage if Arthur doesn’t come back. He’s sorry in ways he can’t explain because now Merlin has an emptiness in him too and it’s not Gwaine alone that is at a loss.

He wants to be angry at Arthur. He wants to hate him for not realizing the holes he leaves behind, but he can’t because somewhere in him he knows Arthur just doesn’t realize the affect he has on people and that he’s larger than life in their eyes. It took Gwaine years to come to that realization, he doesn’t fault Arthur for his handful of days.

But he comes back, nine days later. He rings their doorbell and stands in their doorway until Merlin pulls him inside.

 _I’m sorry._

Gwaine reaches for him but he takes a step back and there’s a sharp, stabbing pain in Gwaine’s side until he truly sees the look on Arthur’s face. It’s open and willing and full of hope.

 _Sorry. I didn’t mean to._

Gwaine shakes his head and hopes Arthur knows it’s okay.

 _It’s just that I need to say this and you touching me will mess me up._

He laughs then, embarrassed as he rolls his eyes at himself, and Gwaine remembers how he could never ever think straight if Gwaine was anywhere near him.

 _This is strange, isn’t it? I don’t quite know how to do it._

He runs his hand through his hair and it sticks up all over the place. He looks from Gwaine to Merlin and sees how Merlin is holding himself back, a touch of fear on his face that Arthur will walk away from them because he doesn’t quite yet know Arthur as Gwaine does and doesn’t see that it’s not them that fills Arthur with uncertainty but the fact that he isn’t one hundred percent in control. Gwaine smiles, he knows what’s coming, but it’s the look on Merlin’s face that pushes Arthur forward.

 _But I want it. I want it._

Merlin laughs in heady relief and throws himself at Arthur, kisses him as Arthur reaches out for Gwaine.

Gwaine closes the distance and holds on as tightly as he can.

 

~*~

 

Gwaine knows he’s luckier than any man has a right to be. He loved Arthur and lost him, but found a man who was willing to let Arthur be found again. Was willing to love him just as fiercely as Gwaine loved him and to be loved in return.

Sometimes Gwaine watches Merlin and Arthur together, he doesn’t join in, he doesn’t touch them, he just watches. It’s not a sexual thing, he doesn’t get hard, he doesn’t touch himself, he just feels a deep settling within him. The string that connects them all pulling everything in him down into the core of him and making him steady and solid. He watches Merlin and Arthur move together and is happy in ways he’s never been.

And they don’t put on a show for him, don’t try to coax him to join them, they simply wrap themselves up in each other and forget everything else. Always afterward, though, they part just enough to let Gwaine settle down between them, the bed warm and smelling of sex and them, and sleep comes quickly and easily.

They’re something else entirely, the three of them, but what they have is more than enough.

 

~end


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